Winter's Light by Mj Hearle Page A

blindly from beneath the covers, reaching for Lamara’s. She took it in both of hers, shocked at the cold touch of her mother’s skin. It was stifling in the small room, but clearly not warm enough. She needed more wood for the fire.
    ‘Mother?’ Lamara asked, staring anxiously down.
    ‘Dau-daughter?’ Her eyelids slowly raised, the pupils taking a moment to adjust to the flickering firelight. Though the sun had yet to disappear behind the mountains, Lamara had covered the windows to block out the icy gusts, which roared down from the snow-capped peak above.
    Seeing her mother shivering, Lamara said, ‘I’ll fetch you another fur.’ She began to pull away, but her mother’s grip was surprisingly strong.
    ‘The gods . . . have spoken to me,’ she rasped in between painful breaths.
    Astonished, Lamara found herself momentarily at a loss for words. Eventually, she stammered, ‘What did they say?’
    Her mother’s eyes clouded and she began to drift away, the effort to speak too much. To her shame, a brief impulse to shake her mother awake gripped Lamara. She calmed herself. They could speak of the vision when she next awoke. If she awoke.
    Lamara went to brush back a lock of black hair from her mother’s feverish forehead, and was startled when her eyes snapped open.
    ‘Moth—?’
    ‘They told me . . . what you plan on doing,’ she hissed.
    Lamara frowned, disturbed by the look of accusation in her mother’s eyes.
    ‘I don’t —’
    ‘Promise me you’ll stop this madness.’
    ‘Mother, it is just the sickness —’
    ‘Foolish girl!’ She struggled to sit up, her voice rising. ‘I hear the hammers outside! I know —’ The words were stolen by a violent coughing fit. Lamara quickly took one of the strips of cloth by the side of the bed and held it to her mother’s mouth, easing her gently down. When the fit passed there was blood on the cloth.
    Her eyes slowly shut again, and her voice became weak. Whatever fire had briefly entered her body now sputtered out. ‘Promise me, daughter,’ she whispered fiercely. As it struggled to escape her constricted throat, her breath sounded eerily like the mountain wind whistling through the nooks and cracks of the hut. ‘Promise me you will not go.’
    A knock at the door offered Lamara a chance to escape.
    ‘There is someone outside,’ she said by way of an excuse to leave. Before she could close the bedroom door, her mother whispered again, ‘Promise me, Lamara.’
    She hesitated in the doorway. A part of her sensed this might be the last time she spoke to her mother. ‘I’ll return soon.’ Later, she would think back on these words and question whether or not she knew she was lying when she spoke them.
    Teodore was waiting for her outside the hut, his clothes and beard covered in a thick layer of white rock dust. He looked like he’d just wandered in through the snow. Towering over Lamara, he remained humble in her presence, unable to meet her gaze. She knew it had less to do with her standing and more to do with whatever secret emotions he harboured behind those kind, grey eyes.
    ‘What is it, Teodore?’
    Teodore cleared his throat, his gaze darting to her, then away again. ‘It is finished, Farseer.’
    Lamara’s eyes widened slightly, but this was the only outer evidence that his words had affected her. As the youngest farseer in the village’s history she had learnt early to affect a commanding presence even though she still felt every bit the insecure seventeen-year-old.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    Teodore nodded, eager to please her. ‘It is to your design. As we finished carving the final rune it began to give off a strange heat. The men are afraid.’
    Lamara’s mouth had gone dry. So soon. She had seen the progress they were making but thought there were still days worth of work ahead. Her mind reeled with the enormity of the task she was about to undertake.
    ‘I’ll be with you in a moment,’ she said, quickly returning inside to